Purpose
The Jinping power station is on the border of the Yanyuan and Muli districts in the autonomous Liangshan Yi area of the Sichuan province. The Yalong River, which the dam will control, is the largest tributary of the Jinsha. For the project, approximately 7,500 inhabitants will be relocated.

Location
The main structure will be a 300 meter high elbow rope wall, to which a 3600-Megawatt Power Station will be attached. It will become the highest or one of the two highest dams on earth, since the Rogun dam, at 335 meters in height, is not yet built. Thyssenkrupp supplied a cableway for the building site.

Design
The power station will have six turbines, each capable of producing 600 megawatts, for a total of 3600 megawatts. The annual production of Jinping I is estimated to be between 16 and 18TWh (billion KW/H).

Power Generation
Construction work began on November 12 2005. Expectations are that power first will be generated in 2012 with the remainder of the work completed by 2014.

Schedule
It is one of many large-scale Chinese water power projects, which at present are in the construction or planning phases. The best-known of these is the Three Gorges Dam. Twelve of these power stations together are to supply 22,850 MW into the nation's power grid. (The 18,200 megawatts of the Three Gorges Dam are not contained in this figure.) The Ertan dam, which will provide 3300 megawatts, is already finished.

Future Projects

Hydro-electricity
Three Gorges Dam
China